This blog was created to post my articles, published or unpublished, written for the Student Voice at UW-River Falls.

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YouTube Part 1: Views

Our last week is upon us, folks. This has been a hectic four weeks, and this one will be no different as we hastily approach finals. We will be focusing on YouTube for our final week. It should be interesting because, although we covered some video aspects in the last month, we have focused primarily on communicative forms of social media. YouTube is a whole new ballgame, it is all about video promotion. It some respects, YouTube is the most effective tool in band marketing. Today we will be looking into video views. Just how often are these bands getting noticed? Later in the week we will talk about likes and dislikes, or thumbs-up and thumbs-down. In order to look at video views we need a controlled pool of bands. I have chosen eight bands, all of which released albums in 2012. All eight are popular enough to showcase hundreds of thousands of views.

The eight bands are Mumford & Sons, Of Monsters and Men, Grizzly Bear, The xx, Beach House, Two Door Cinema Club, The Lumineers, and Silversun Pickups. They will provide the numbers for research and prognoses. What I have done is search all eight bands, band name only, on YouTube. I then clicked on their most popular video from 2012 according to YouTube. This video has to be a music video and off their most recent album. After the results are posted I will analyze the material. Below are the results.

And the winner is…The Lumineers. This should come as no surprise. “Ho Hey” is a big-time single that dominates popular radio. 63 million views is a lot, but not far behind is “Little Talks” from Of Monsters and Men. It is a well-known song that gets more popular by the hour, but I did not expect to see such a huge number put up by the video. In comparison to those two bands, Mumford & Sons‘ 25 million views is somewhat disappointing. They can not complain, though, as three of the bands failed to get over the 800 thousand mark. Two Door Cinema Club and The xx were very close in view-count. They are both from Britain, so a lot of their appeal comes from overseas.

I am a little surprised at the tiny output from Grizzly Bear‘s latest single, “Gun-Shy,” as they are increasingly popular by the day. Silversun Pickups‘ number is a little higher than I expected, which is a positive for them. We have to look at the gravity of the singles here. “Ho Hey,” “Little Talks,” and “I Will Wait” are all played on popular radio daily and hourly. Of course these videos are going to tally up some huge numbers, while others would be happy with two million hits.

This research shows the disparity within the genre. Indie rock is a very diverse genre that spans from 100 fans to 100 million, depending on the band. Indie rock was once a genre that was all about being unknown and using a variety of instruments to make sweet, sweet music. The sound is still very similar, but the genre is slowly becoming quite popular. Punk, hard rock, metal, jazz, and a wide variety of other genres are slowly losing speed, while indie rock is flourishing.

Just the raw numbers, the amount of views, should make it apparent that bands still need to be using this media outlet. Music videos are slowly becoming a dying art, with the death of MTV and VH1, but with the power of the internet in full gear these bands need to make as many videos as possible. Some people use it exclusively for their music needs. I have, on several occasions, listened to music on YouTube and later bought an album. This is common, and must be taken advantage of.

If you take a look around these band’s YouTube pages you will notice that they are bringing in huge audiences, even the little guys. I think it was good to see examples of wide-ranging viewership to show how important it is to make music videos to draw an audience, as well as prove how different and diverse the genre is. It can be an ocean of noise sometimes.